GIS Workshops: Data Sources

The Compendium of Environmental Sustainability Indicator Collections, Version 1.1 contains 426 indicators for 239 countries from five major environmental sustainability indicator efforts: the 2006 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), 2004 Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI), the Rio to Johannesburg Dashboard, the Wellbeing of Nations, and 2006 National Footprint Accounts. It also incorporates 38 ancillary variables such as region name, dummy variables for landlocked countries and small island states, population, GDP, and land area. The collection is compiled and distributed by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).

GIS shapefile of world countries.

Created by the National Geographic Society

The HPI measures what matters: the extent to which countries deliver long, happy, sustainable lives for the people that live in them. The Index uses global data on life expectancy, experienced well-being and Ecological Footprint to calculate this.

Gross domestic product (GDP) measures the total output of goods and services for final use occurring within the domestic territory of a given country, regardless of the allocation to domestic and foreign claims.

Unitless scale (0 is the worst possible score and 100 is the best)
Household Equity Score consists of a single indicator: the ratio of the richest 20%'s income share to the poorest 20%.

Percentage of country's territory in threatened ecoregions

Percentage of country under severe water stress.
Percentage of national territory in which water consumption exceeds 40 percent of available water.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Indicator
Z-score (mean is 0, +1 and -1 are plus and minus one standard deviation above the mean, high numbers are 'good')

The Air Quality policy category represents an unweighted average of the following indicators: Urban Particulates and Regional Ozone.
Higher represents less pollution.

Disability-adjusted life expectancy at birth

The score is based on the total fertility rate, or average number of children per woman.

Percentage of the population with insufficient food.

Under Weight Percentage

Education score.
Unitless scale (0 is the worst possible score and 100 is the best)

Unitless scale (0 is the worst possible score and 100 is the best)
Freedom and Governance Score is the average of four unweighted indicators: political rights rating (PRR), civil liberties rating (CLR), press freedom rating (PFR), and corruption perceptions index (CPI).

Unitless scale (0 is the worst possible score and 100 is the best)
Peace and Order Score is the average of two unweighted indicators: peace, represented by deaths from armed conflicts per year or military expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, whichever gives the lower score, and crime, represented by the unweighted average of the homicide rate and other violent crimes.

Percentage of population with improved access.
"Improved" sanitation technologies are: connection to a public sewer, connection to septic system, pour-flush latrine, simple pit latrine, ventilated improved pit latrine.

Unitless scale (0 is the worst possible score and 100 is the best)
Communication Score is the average score of two unweighted inidcators: a telephone indicator, represented by the lower score of main telephone lines and cellular phone subscribers per 100 persons, fault per 100 main telephone lines per year, and internet users.